Richard?Lord

Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus says the sud­den clo­sure of the Point Lisas-based Arcelor­Mit­tal is a "re­al tragedy."

The com­pa­ny an­nounced its clo­sure in T&T yes­ter­day, one day af­ter it was fined by the In­dus­tri­al Court for the man­ner in which it laid off more than 600 em­ploy­ees in De­cem­ber last year.

Ques­tioned about the de­vel­op­ment as she en­tered Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Bap­tiste-Primus said the move meant the com­pa­ny "was not able to iden­ti­fy a vi­able op­tion.."

Bap­tiste-Primus said fil­ing for in­sol­ven­cy was a ju­di­cial process and that she was in the process of "re­spond­ing to the com­pa­ny to en­quire of the com­pa­ny what type of wind-up process is this and who are its cred­i­tors."

She said she re­ceived two let­ters from the com­pa­ny dat­ed March 8, de­scrib­ing it as a rather strange co­in­ci­dence.

She said the first let­ter in­formed her of the pro­posed clo­sure of op­er­a­tions and the need for a meet­ing. Bap­tiste-Primus told re­porters she was un­able to at­tend the pro­posed meet­ing for March 9 be­cause of her sched­ule.

Bap­tiste-Primus said she was keen to know "what will be the sta­tus of the work­ers' sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits." She added that she was of the opin­ion that "oth­er cred­i­tors may have pri­or­i­ty over the pay­ment of ben­e­fits to the work­er."

She said she was to re­ceive fur­ther ad­vice on the mat­ter from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, adding that she had ini­tial dis­cus­sions on the mat­ter with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

Help­ing the work­ers

The min­is­ter said the is­sue was a trou­bling one, but af­ter look­ing at it for sev­er­al hours a ten-point plan was de­vel­oped to as­sist re­trenched work­ers.

She said, "A crit­i­cal as­pect of that plan is meet­ing with the fi­nan­cial sec­tor."

She was ex­pect­ed to meet sep­a­rate­ly with the pres­i­dent of the Cred­it Union League and the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the UN/UNDP co­or­di­na­tor yes­ter­day, and was ar­rang­ing meet­ings with the pres­i­dent of the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

"We all have to put our heads to­geth­er to see how best a hu­mane ap­proach can be adopt­ed," she said.

Not­ing that the af­fect­ed work­ers have loans, mort­gages and oth­er bills to pay, she said she would be meet­ing with the fi­nan­cial stake­hold­ers to de­ter­mine win­dows of op­por­tu­ni­ties for the re­trenched work­ers.

A re­trench­ment reg­is­ter is among the plans, the min­is­ter added, "to cap­ture those work­ers (and), in ad­di­tion to that we will be meet­ing with em­ploy­ers to match skills with the re­trenched work­ers to iden­ti­fy al­ter­na­tive sources of em­ploy­ment."

The min­istry's Co­op­er­a­tive De­part­ment will al­so be brought on stream to as­sist the work­ers who may want to pool their re­sources.

She did not agree with a view ex­pressed by Op­po­si­tion MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh that the ac­tion by the com­pa­ny was an in­dict­ment on the In­dus­tri­al Court. She said she had ul­ti­mate faith in the court, adding that the de­ci­sion to shut down op­er­a­tions "was not tak­en last night."

She said fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's de­ci­sion by the com­pa­ny, "the work­ers clear­ly end up be­ing the losers be­cause they are be­ing sep­a­rat­ed but not walk­ing away with their sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits."